Pictures and Stuff

Wonderful welcome to the country!


The ice cream was awesome!!



The pigeons were huge!


Those orange fruits they look like oranges, smell like tangarenes, but they're lemons.

So much cement!


Taxi's and chickens all in one place.

The last day for the awesome ice cream.

This took a lot longer than I thought it would to get up and with only a couple of my pictures. I tried to pick some of the good ones. There are more pictures if I get them fixed up a little, the ones at night didn't turn out right, then I'll put some more up.

¡Mary! ¡En Vivo de Bolivia¡

¡Hola! ¡Hola! Mary here, reporting live from Bolivia. i´ve had another great trip here in Montero. We´ve been working with great gusto at the Cruz Roja (Red Cross) Clinic performing incredible feats of manual labor. You may have to see the pictures to believe what all has been accomplished in just a couple of weeks. Sand, bricks, cement, rebar, mountains -- you name it, we moved it.

As always, the food is fantastic. My favorite has been the fried piña.... mmmm.... so good!

It is also a joy to see old friends from the trips in the past. Esneida and Franklin are well and living in Santa Cruz. Esneida had another little boy, Jose, in December and he is muy guapo. and little Daniel is also good looking and loves to play paper, rock, scissors. His uncle Daniel is done with school and working at Villa Cochabamba full-time. He and Armando have been translators at the Clinic and have been a great help there. Olga came to our farewell dinner last night and says hello to Olivia.

The time here has flown by again for me, and we´ll be leaving tonight for Miami. Goodbye fried piña, motorcycle taxis, and buckets of sand!

Final Day

Hey people it´s the last day here in Montero. We leave sometime around 11 tonight. I am so glad that I can sleep on the plane. Doing some mental math I think if there aren´t a whole lot of delays then we should be back home around 9 or 9:30. But that´s without delays and on our way here the plane was delayed almost five hours so who knows whats going to happen this time.

I still have a lot of packing to do.Thankfully I can leave a lot of stuff here. Some shirts and snacks and some other stuff too. I really should have started all this stuff yesterday, but there was so much stuff going on that I got a tad bit lazy and didn´t start.

Now that the trip is almost over it doesn´t really feel like we´ve been here for two weeks. It feels shorter, but I suppose it´s like that with every trip.

No matter how much fun I´ve had on this trip I can´t wait to see home again. I miss home.

Breif Update

Back to work after a breif weekend. Mixing cement and hauling more sand. That´s about all we´ve been doing at the work cite.

Sunday was all about catching up on some sleep. That worked out quite well. I slept through breakfast, woke up to hear Eric preach then went back to sleep till sometime in the afternoon. In the afternoon some of us went to the orphanage. I made a new friend there, she is so sweet! I was able to hand out some of the candy and stuff that I brought with me.

It´s kind of amazing to think that there are only a couple of days left here. Just three more days and we´ll be headed home.

News from the Clinic

Team change for me. I ended up working with the medical team while I was a little bit sick and now I think I am going to switch for good. I love working at the Red Cross and working with the people on the building team but I also really like working with people here at the clinic. When I say here I literally mean here; I am trying to type this on one of the computers at the clinic. I haven't been doing anything to complicated here, just some eye tests and handing out eye drops and bibles and a little bit of candy.

The working team has been working on more painting, hauling, laying bricks, re barring, and building a roof. I do miss working with them. I liked working on the re bar even if I did get a couple of scratches from the wires. They may be coming to the clinic sometime this afternoon just to see. That ought to be interesting.

Looking forward to tomorrow; we're going to Santa Cruz to do a little shopping. I'll be looking for some souvenirs and some other stuff for other peoples. So to my friend that I told I would get her a postcard I shall look for one.

One more thing we, meaning all of us, went to an orphanage to play some basketball. I didn't actually play, because I can't play to save my life. I did take a lot of pictures though. With a little bit of editing the pictures should turn out pretty well. Going over there was a lot of fun. I was glad to see that the girl there enjoyed playing and some of the things we brought with us.

Updates on the Work Day

Glad to report that we are finally done hauling all those bricks up to the third floor. Now we have started hauling half full buckets of sand up to the third floor. And that was all before lunch.

After lunch included working on rebarring, I only think that´s how it´s spelled. I worked on cutting the metal, bending metal into squares, twisting smaller peices of metal around bigger peices, and trying to avoid any serious injuries. Thankfully there were no serious injuries although there were a few scrathes here and there.

To the people that want to see pictures and videos of the stuff here it is kind of difficult to deal with the internet cafe´s so I am going to make one big post with both pictures and videos when I get home in about a week and a half.

Apparently everything is going fine with the medical team and nothing too serious to report. And there is some news Richard Sr. is taking out an eyeball tomorrow. I so wish that I could see that. And one last little bit of news for the medical team: they have stolen away one person that was supposed to work on the building team.

The general agreement here is that the food is really, really, really good. I would love to know how to cook as well as the people here.

First Day At Work

Hey people back home!!!!

First day of work. Since I´m on the building team I can´t really speak for the medical team, but we worked hard and we did get stuff done. Cutting and bending metal, lots of metal, working on a roof, painting, and hauling bricks up the side of a three story building.

Our team was lucky we got to go back to the hotel for lunch; not to mention the hour long siesta we got.

Yesterday there wasn´t a whole lot to report on. It was just the last day before we all had to get to work. Playing cards, talking, a little tv, and eating was pretty much all we got done yesterday. The food here is awesome!!!! I really wish that I knew how to cook stuff like the people at the hotel do.

I really hope that we get to keep the good weather and the breeze.

The word from the medical team is that their first day went well. A couple of surgeries and what not, I really don´t understand exactly what it is that they do all day, and it went well.

P.S. Margaret say no revolts yet.

First Day or Finally Out of the Airport

First day here! Plenty going on, even though we got here at least five hours later than we expected. Lucky thing though we got to eat some lunch pretty much as soon as we arrived.

The afternoon was spent almost exactly like how the time in the airport was spent; playing games, talking, and not actually doing a whole lot.

Dinner at the hotel and then a quick walk to get some ice cream. Which was pretty good; like everyone said.

P.S. Barry Little says hi!

Loading up and heading out......

The team loaded up 3:00 Friday afternoon for the trip to Charlotte airport. It was 91 degrees. Other team members will join in Charlotte and Miami.

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Only 19.5 hours until we leave!!

Some Stuff

Bolivia

Capital: Sucre
Largest City: Santa Cruz
Official languages: Spanish & 36 native languages

Government: Republic
Currency: Boliviano (BOB)
Calling code +591
Time zone (UTC-4)

Bolivia, is a landlocked country in central South America.
Prior to European colonization, the Bolivian territory was a part of the Incan Empire.
The state has no official religion.

Montero is a city in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, about 50 km north of Santa Cruz de la Sierra. Population 90,837 (2006). Montero has experienced growth in recent decades, becoming an important city in this region.
Montero has an elevation of 300 meters above sea level and an average temperature of 23 °C. The city is predominantly agricultural, producing soybeans, cotton, corn and rice.

Another good internet site to look at is Bolivia Web. This site offers all things Bolivian on the web. It includes virtual tours of sites as well as access to music, pictures, video, and commercial sites. It also hosts over 500 Bolivian blogs and you can read Bolivian newspapers online.
http://www.boliviaweb.com/

Hopefully I got all the information right. I got a lot of stuff from Wikipedia, so if I am wrong please tell me, nicely.

Getting Ready to Go

Hi people, I'm Hillary. This is going to be my first trip to Bolivia, or anywhere near there. Though it isn't going to be my first time out of the country. It's also going to be the first mission trip I've been. I'm finally getting the chance to go. I've wanted to go to help and do stuff but never got the opportunity.

Getting ready to go to Bolivia was somewhat painful. Yellow fever shot and about two or three others. NOT FUN! I have never been a real fan of shots to begin with so having to get three one right after the other was not my dream come true. Then the medicines aren't a whole lot of fun either.

Health wise I think I'm ready to go.

I have been trying to get all the stuff on the list into one suitcase, and it isn't easy. I still have to finish packing so I have to find some way to make it all work.

Physically I am almost ready to go.

I think this is the most nervous I've been in a long time.

Mentally I am incredably nervous.

To all the people out there reading wish me luck!